*shudder*
This is gonna work really well.
Wasn't this already done and found to be a failure ? I recall that originally some private company was in charge of training the Iraki army, but they did such a crappy job that the U.S. army had to take over.
How long is this 'training' going to continue? Seriously, Iraqi forces appear to have been continually in training for the last half decade or so..... with little to show for it. As for the use of contractors........ yeah, that's going to work. Standards, anybody?
Wow...the contractors are going to pocket the money and give the Iraqis guns that don't work and ammunition way past its shelf life.
Since most of the "Iraqi Army" seems to be composed these days of the Badr Corps these days it looks like Maliki's government will fall sooner due to no training and inadequate equipment.
I want to know what they are going to pay these guys... how much more will these contracted trainers get over our troops that have being working and dying in Iraq for 5 years.
"Does anyone see this as the next step in KBR/Blackwater/Halliburton's plan to become the GOP's standing army?"
Does a wild bear shit in the woods?
Is Alecia Nugent's bluegrass/country singing so straight-up and honest she makes those Nashville Divas sound like a bunch of hookers standing out on a street corner, arguing over a john?
Is that scrolly little mandolin (Just like Mr. Bill's...) that you found in your Nana's attic, which says "Gibson" on the pegboard and "Lloyd Loar" on the ticket inside, worth $150,000 dollars?
The answer to all four of these questions is a resounding yes.
Iraq was once a functioning country. Could defend itself, educate itself and provide for itself. Sure, Saddam was a fcuked up individual............ but there are many, many fcuked up individuals (see Mugabe, Zimbabwe, see Josef Fritzl, Amstetten, Austria, daughter, incest, 7 children, etc., etc.). Granted Saddam had a larger stage to play on, but the country still functioned, despite it all. And then that dipstick, Bush came along. And really Fucked Up.
As a matter of historical record, mercenary forces have been unreliable at best.
Since they're getting paid, their number one priority is to survive to draw a bigger paycheck.
Mercenaries fight best against unarmed civilians, and children.
Fuck 'em.
I bet Blackwater can take Paraguay!
Good plan - if your objective is to lower Iraqi military morale & boost that of the insurgency.
Oh, & just wait for the look on the Iraqi Defense Minister's face when he gets the bill. Surely they'll find a legal way to screw both Iraq & America out of some heavy spondulix ... their services do NOT come with a money-back guarantee.
I've written about this before. I won't bother to link to the comments because I'm pretty sure no one read them before or will follow the links to read them this time, either.
Suffice to say that Iraq was our Adrianople. For the next decade or three, at minimum, we're going to be seeing mercs more and more in first-line positions.
We have to think about how they're to be controlled and managed, period, end of sentence. Allowing them to serve under their own captains the way we do invites the worst sort of catastrophes.
We CANNOT afford to sweep this one under the rug the way we normally do when the civic task is unsightly enough. These will be an ever-increasing and influential part of our armed forces going forward.
Do you want these people to operate out of control? The way they are now?
Stormcrow, you really expect the American Imperium to last as long as the Western empire after that?
Reading about the Mercenary revolt against Carthage might give some insight as well; not that I expect BushCo to ever do that.
Just finished "Kill Zone," an assembly line novel that revolves around the plot to privatize - and profitize - the military. The gun porn in it was okay, the one thing notable being that an ex-sniper would co-write a book so critical of the idea.
You do realize that Machiavelli wrote strongly and passionatley against mercenaries, whom he saw as the main cause and not the cure for constant intra-state warfare in the Italy of his day.
Stormcrow, you really expect the American Imperium to last as long as the Western empire after that?
Oh, no.
The American Imperium hasn't been a viable proposition since considerably prior to the Iraq War. Just about all of us, myself included, didn't see this clearly because we won the military piece of the Gulf War so handily.
But the same forces that wrecked the Soviet attempt to secure Afghanistan spelled finis for us as well, as latter-day conquistadores. The Europeans could have told us this if we'd been disposed to listen, because they've been over this ground already, in the late 40s, 50s, and 60s.
Multiple simultaneous developments in infantry weapons, operational methods, and grand strategy have combined to produce the potential for a perfect storm of resistance, under the right conditions.
I haven't read about the Mercenary Revolt, and thanks for the tip. I will be.
But my point about mercs (i) presupposes control problems, and (ii) hinges upon the betrayal, by the government, of yet another generation of American soldiers.
Mercs are historically troublesome. Machiavelli went to some length to spell out his objections to mercs in "The Prince", and for cause.
The Roman system, post Gaius Marius, was essentially a system based on regularized and controlled mercs, since Marius' New Model Army consisted of long-service professionals recruited from the urban poor. These people didn't serve for a set term and then go home, because they didn't have "homes" as such to return to. They served for the retirement bonus.
The Roman controls weren't good enough, because the army became increasingly troublesome as the Empire evolved. We've all heard the story about the Praetorians who selected Claudius as Emperor after Caligula's murder. Every new set of civil wars involved claimants securing legionary allegiance by means of donatives (read "bribes"), and these got out of hand by the end of the Antonine period. This system, which was never stabilized properly, ran totally amok during the Third Century Crisis.
My whole point is that we have sunk our chances of rebuilding a Post-Iraq Army of volunteers along the lines it was set up prior. Sufficient trust in the system isn't there anymore.
So the volunteers are going. Who is going to replace them?
Not draftees, unless we want the current political situation in this country to go from "failure" to "civic order problems". We betrayed an earlier army of draftees and that's why we're using volunteers, remember?
The last betrayals, in Iraq, have painted us into a corner.
Here's the telling bit from the the original article in the WaPo. Emphasis mine.
Michael O'Hanlon, a military specialist at the Brookings Institution, said the need for contractors to support the Iraq transition teams is linked to the shortage of such officers in the U.S. Army at a time when it is also expanding. "There are insufficient field-grade officers in our own service, and we need the captains and majors as we increase our own ground forces," he said.
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